


Have a heart

by shittershutter



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-27 05:30:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12074460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shittershutter/pseuds/shittershutter
Summary: “I can’t promise it’ll be any good,” Tommy announces without further preamble before lowering himself to the floor in a calculated succession of tested moves — hands, a good leg at a sharp angle, then the bad one at whatever angle it chooses to bend at today.“But I need this.”





	Have a heart

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [【授权翻译】Have a heart](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12133218) by [psychomath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychomath/pseuds/psychomath)



> This one is about friendship, blowjobs and love, in that order. 
> 
> Somewhat a continuation to this: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11860923 
> 
> and this 
> 
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/11980245
> 
> * Unbetad, sorry.

It’s the seventh “night of drinks with the boys” Tommy attends this year with Summers being there, sticking out like a sore thumb. Tommy doesn’t even remember the man from the war. Granted, he’s lost a lot of little memories and brief acquaintances in a feverish haze of his hospital months, but someone as loud and obnoxious would be hard to forget. 

“Wasn’t he the one who threw a grenade into a tank point blank that one time?” Alex shrugs, disinterested. For him it’s permissible to have memory lapses — the man nearly had his head blown off and has his half-burned eyebrows that didn't quite grow back to prove it. 

Tommy cracks his neck trying to will his irritation to dissipate. Summers has been boasting about his bar fights this entire evening, always the clear winner of any altercation, and now through the alcohol brewing in his brain, Tommy can hear his story getting tangled in some bizarre fable about catching two fairies and kicking some sense into them. 

And he’s been so sheltered inside his little world with Gibson; he can’t make sense of the story at first. He is about to open his mouth to mention how his mama always told him to be kind to the fairy folk and whatnot until the man elaborates and it clicks painfully in his brain. 

“If you let some other bloke use you as a urinal you have to expect a proper beatdown heading your way, I reckon,” Summers muses. 

The room roars with laughter and Tommy feels his nostrils flaring like he is a fire-breathing dragon amidst the cigarette smoke. It catches him by surprise, the sudden agility in his face that is stuck as a permanent mask of sorrow and confusion most of the time. 

“Does it make you feel better?” he asks Summers from behind the beer glass. “Beating the righteous wrath of god into those fairies, I mean?” He feels the unfamiliar burning under his ribs, and while it’s uncomfortable, it also fills him with the pulsating energy to the tips of his fingers. 

Summers’ smile begins to slowly dissolve as he registers the absence of a joke behind Tommy’s words. It sounds like a genuine question, and in a way, for Tommy it is. He glances at his fingers around the glass and tries to remember the last time those knuckles collided with someone's nose. 

Then he thinks about Gibson’s broken fingers, about his bent ribs and the mask of sorrow returns. He is never afraid for himself. Looking so frail and unthreatening with his leg still serving him more as a crutch than a proper limb, Tommy can wobble around town, and even stray dogs don’t see him as prey worthy of their time. 

Gibson, on the other hand… Broad, strong and so lost and unable to dissolve any tense situation with a word. What if someone like Summers sees him touching Tommy’s hand briefly as they walk down the street forgetting themselves, what then? 

He shakes the anguish off and stares back at Summers across the table, his other hand gathering into a tight fist on his knee. 

“It’s heartbreaking, really,” Alex weasels his way into a tense silence as he weasels himself between Tommy’s new nemesis and the man next to him putting his fresh beer down. 

“Summers is forced to live knowing some ungodly creatures are engaging in activities his own wife won’t go near under the threat of imminent death.” 

Alex doesn’t look at Tommy, his big compassionate eyes fixed atop Summers’ head like he is a saint who is about to lay a blessing hand upon him. 

“That poor woman, her. Living under a constant threat of being poked by that slime-infested shrimp of his.”

The room explodes again, Summers mumbling to himself, and Tommy feels his fist untangling, fingers still shaky. 

“Let’s go, Tommy,” Alex tells him. “Our dates are waiting”. 

* *

“You see, Thomas,” Alex slurs once they are outside, his tone somewhat serious. “You are my friend.” 

Tommy starts smiling slowly despite the anger still buzzing under, but there is a pointy finger in his face to stop the smile from spreading too far. “And don’t get me wrong, I’d prefer someone fun. Someone with shared interests,” he adds staring down two giggling young women passing them. “But you are all I have.”

Alex clicks his tongue and quickly fixes Tommy’s buttons. With one of his hands only semi-functional, he tends to miss all the right holes. He dusts the shoulders of Tommy’s coat that is too big for him and is hanging loosely crippling his proportions even further and resumes dragging them both down the street. 

“Because you have a heart, as big as your sense of reality is not. It’s hard to come by these days”.

He tells Tommy how when he first came to visit him at the hospital he was floored by the emptiness behind his eyes. It was like they propped Tommy’s carcass against the pillows but forgot to switch the lights on. 

How the nurses told him coming back from the war was the cheapest trick. Now, staying was much harder. And for the longest time — for years of Tommy laughing at his jokes and moving through existence at a turtle pace — there was genuine worry Tommy wasn’t going to. 

That, of course, until the Frenchman showed up. With his sad eyes and his big careful hands, full of grave mysteries and wonder. 

Alex throws his hands in a broad abracadabra gesture, stolen beer bottle reflecting the lonely street lamp light. 

Tommy feels overwhelmed and dizzy out of sudden, and he throws himself into the other man’s chest embracing him tightly. 

“I wanted you dead,” he whispers into the warmth of Alex’s coat. “Instead of him, you know. For the longest time, each time you’d open your fucking mouth I wanted…” His eyelids sting, and he rubs his face angrily against the fabric to dry out any treacherous tear that may slip through. 

“Oh I know,” Alex agrees, taking a big gulp of foamy liquid, his other hand patting Tommy’s back. “You have honest eyes, Thomas. They spell everything out."

They start walking again, swaying, and the moon above them is impossibly bright. 

“So if you sucking cock is the price I have to pay for having you around…” Alex sums up, holding the door for Tommy to usher him in for the night. 

“I don’t really…” Tommy starts. After nights and nights on his back under Gibson, squirming, reaching up to the man’s face like Gibson is his personal god they’ve never yet got to simpler things. It’s been all crying and catharsis and holding each other together with their trembling, broken hands. 

Alex gasps and grabs his chest. “What kind of love is that?”

Tommy snorts and kicks him in the shin with his good leg slamming the door in his face. 

 

* * 

 

As Tommy crawls up the stairs the higher he goes, the less angry he feels. The burning sensation in his chest is moving lower and lower until it settles in his belly where he keeps it when he pushes the door open wrestling his coat off as he goes. 

Gibson looks up from the kitchen table where he is barricaded by the English textbooks and smiles broadly at him. He looks so cute in the reading glasses they got him that Tommy’s heart swells and falls under its weight down right where he burns.

The chair creaks when Gibson moves to get up, but Tommy stops him with a light push at his chest. 

“I can’t promise it’ll be any good,” Tommy announces without further preamble before lowering himself to the floor in a calculated succession of tested moves — hands, a good leg at a sharp angle, then the bad one at whatever angle it chooses to bend at today. 

“But I need this.”

In his head, he is fluid and cat-like with a seductive smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. A vulgar inky scribble from one of Alex's magazines. The vision, fictitious as it is, encourages Tommy to attempt a seductive leer to which Gibson reacts with something bordering on confusion. But he doesn’t protest at the very least and it's good enough.

It must be bloody confusing, Tommy figures while going to war with Gibson’s trousers. For the first year of them sleeping together, it ends every time with them sobbing in each other’s arms, so this performance is definitely something fresh, in a good way or not. 

Tommy doesn’t feel like crying just yet. Although his hand, the one that has two fingers missing, sabotages the process by grabbing things he isn’t aiming for and missing the ones he is.

Gibson reaches to help him out, and Tommy responds with a warning “Ah!” and smacks his hand away. 

By the time the trousers are defeated both of them are sweaty and flushed, and Gibson is completely hard sticking upright against the rest of the fully clothed body. It should look comical, but as Tommy takes the sight in with his dilated pupils, it makes him pant a little. 

He stares at the wet slit, mouth watering, the giddy tongue dancing along the teeth. His fingers tremble with desire, and he drops them down and laces them together to get the shivers under control. 

There is a pause between him and the cock with Gibson so far away above and then, as Tommy leans in and places a wet plush kiss under the head, what he feels is neither shame nor anger. It’s gratitude. For Gibson being there and making him feel like is loved, desired even. 

He closes his eyes and pushes the foreskin back with the soft lips. The smooth head slides into his mouth, Gibson leaking on his tongue. It tastes like the rest of him, like Tommy knew it would, salty and sharp. 

He concentrates on the hot texture of veins under his lips then as his shuddering breaths wreck his nostrils and takes a bit more in. Strings of saliva hang messily from his lower lip — there is too much of it in his mouth — and he still hasn’t mustered any courage to look up at Gibson. 

The man vibrates all around him, little shakes echoing through Tommy’s bones like he has a fever, too, and under the threatening hum of blood against his eardrums, he can’t hear him breathing at all. 

The soft hand on the back of his head makes Tommy look up. It’s an involuntary response to Gibson touching him — the man doesn’t speak, so he’s tuned to the smallest physical contact like it’s the loudest scream — and it makes Tommy choke up through the slurping. 

Gibson looks like he is about to cry, but there is no anguish in the expression. It’s sticky sweet, and a bit surprised like he can’t quite believe Tommy is real. The warmth Tommy feels spreads through his bone marrow and in the light of these pale green eyes he does not feel like a urinal, not in the slightest. 

He unhooks his own bony fingers and interlaces them with Gibson’s in his hair, their shivers uncoordinated until they sync and subside. It gives him a burst of courage to get more cock in while maintaining the eye contact and for the short moment he does feel like a hot little vixen from a magazine page, that is until Gibson bumps against the roof of his mouth.

He chokes and rears back, gasping, with Gibson’s careful hands framing his face. 

“I told you I’m no expert,” he croaks and kisses the head again to make up for the outburst. 

Gibson chuckles, gruff, a sound so rough it makes the hairs on the back of Tommy’s neck stand up. He doesn’t push Tommy, not even once, with urgency so close under the skin. But he holds him in place, thumbs stroking the puffy skin under his eyes as Tommy closes them again and sucks. 

It’s building fast enough to have some mercy on his working jaw and to keep him right where he is. Tommy grabs both of his wrists, thumbs stroking the ticklish skin, and squeezes them hard when Gibson moans loudly. And good god, it is loud, deafening, the most desperate sound Tommy’s ever heard him make. 

Tommy tightens his lips, tongue stroking the spot under the head — the one Gibson likes him to rub his thumb against when he works him with his hand — and just feels it flow down his throat. 

He swallows a few times chaotically until it’s too much. Then he embarrasses himself with a coughing fit like he suspected he would, throat clicking in panic. 

In his head, he leans back graciously giving the slit one final lick with a sneaky tongue and looks up to drink up the sight of feverish Gibson with his shirt darkened in the armpits and mouth gaping with silent pants. 

In reality, though, he has to grab the man’s knee for balance and wipe his reddened mouth vigorously to save some dignity as come and saliva are dripping down his neck and soaking his collar. 

Gibson catches his face again — Tommy squeezes his eyes shut, cheeks burning — and wipes the traces from the corners of his mouth and jaw. 

Tommy turns his head without opening his eyes and kisses Gibson’s wrist for the trouble letting the hands hold him upright. It feels like he floats, head above water, as a goofy smile spreads across his face. 

It’s half-bliss, half-embarrassment, one merging into the other. Tommy drops his burning forehead to Gibson’s thigh and whispers, barely audible: “Love, I can’t get up.”

His bad leg is somewhere behind him, separated, far away to not even hurt. It fixes him to the floor like an anchor, though, and Tommy knows damn well any insistent motion on his part will just trip him over and make him fall onto his side. 

He doesn’t want Gibson to feel sorry for him, not after this. 

Gibson grabs him under the arms like a child and pulls him up until Tommy can lean against his body and get his hips working again. The bad leg buckles sending the sharp currents of pain straight to the brain and Tommy drops awkwardly, half-astride Gibson’s leg. 

He humps the man’s knee then through layers of clothing like a fucking dog, face squished against Gibson’s neck to suffocate himself with the man’s scent — and if Gibson didn’t feel sorry for him before he can sure start now. 

Gibson is kissing the exposed skin between his neck and his shoulder instead, his big warm hands on his hips to help Tommy with whatever rhythm he is trying to accomplish, and when Tommy is done in seconds, he gathers him into his arms, boots and all, and carries him to the bed. 

Tommy keeps swaying on the mattress as the hands undress him, his inflamed skin breaking in goose bumps when exposed to the cold air, and through the alcoholic hum in his brain, he can hear Gibson speaking in short, broken sentences with the words he does not recognize. 

French sounds good, personal. Like it’s only for Tommy to hear. He won’t remember any of it come morning, but he hopes it sips through his skin and stays there. 

Gibson is suddenly above him, and he kisses his swollen mouth before Tommy can protest. He opens his lips to say something but gets the hot tongue shoved between them, and it shuts him up for good. 

He is still getting kissed when he falls asleep.


End file.
